Make the most of life!

Sometimes I have days that are so eye opening and almost life changing. Saturday was one of these days for me. My little boy showed me what I **should** be doing on a weekend with him, as opposed to what we often do, do at weekends!

As a Mum, it can be hard to keep the fun going all week, every week. Especially if, like me, you spend a lot of time ferrying your child to various after school clubs to keep them active and healthy! The weekend comes and I’m zonked! I pass the parental control to my husband, who is an incredibly hands on Dad and makes weekends so much fun for my boy. But it’s me that’s missing out.

So, it tends to be me that takes my son to the birthday parties. Hubby isn’t the biggest fan of kids parties, but he does them when he needs to and I’m fine with that. After all, it’s a few hours and a nice amount of time to ‘just be’. I’m a big kid, so I usually love going to the parties. Growing up was never my thing, lol.

Anyway, we went to a birthday party on Saturday and we had a great time. I caught up with people I hadn’t seen in a very long time and my little one was, for once, an absolute angel. So much so, I was brimming with pride as we left and the first thing we did when we got in the car was to call my husband to tell him how great our Boo had been.

So, my boy asks to go to the park. My husband is about to jump in the shower, so I tell him to go ahead and I’ll take him to the park. Boo chose the bigger park with the woods, rather than our local playground park, which I didn’t mind, apart from the parking. We walk in together, hand in hand, having one of our silly conversations. Just as we get to the park, he runs off, straight to the zip wire. Queuing, isn’t his thing, so I get nervous. But there was nothing to be nervous about. He stands there patiently waiting for his turn… Result! After he has his go, we head off for him to have a run around on the big pirate ship. I hear someone talking about the lake, which I had no idea there was, so I suggest we go on an adventure to see the lake and the ducks and swans. I know of some fairy doors are scattered in the woods and so I take him on this magical quest.

It’s this little idea that changed how I thought about weekends. As we walked through the muddy field, I see his imagination go into overdrive. He picks up his imaginary map off the grass, which he’s managed to rip, somehow. He magically fixes it and makes it plastic so it won’t rip again – excellent. We follow his directions and with a little prompting, we manage to navigate to the lake. The sun is starting to set but there’s plenty of light left for our walk.

We take in the view of the partly frozen lake, the ducks, coots and swans gliding in the water. As we walk around, it’s a moment I need to capture. I get out my phone and and not to break our tradition, we pull funny faces snap some silly pictures. I take a picture of my lovely boy by the lake and realise that he’s growing so fast. A tiny bit of sadness hits me.

We keep walking and we meet some people on the other side of the lake feeding the swans. ‘If only I thought about this outing in advance’ I think to myself. My excited boy says hello to them all and after looking at the elegant birds, we finally make it into the woods. I’m wearing my favourite boots and the ground is soft and muddy. Boggy in some places. I couldn’t care less about us getting muddy, in fact I welcome it on this walk. As we trudge through the muddy woods, my boy is talking about the fairy doors and we discuss who might live behind the tiny doors. We talk about so many things on this walk, not only am I brimming with pride, I’m exploding with love for this small human being I made. I MADE THIS AMAZING HUMAN BEING!!!

As we pass a dog walker, he says hello and excitedly tells him we are looking for fairy doors. The kind man tells us we are close and his eyes light up. The magic is reignited and he’s on a high. “Mummy, we will keep walking until we find it. It’s not far now, I just know it’s not! Then we can say hello to Ben and Holly!” he says certainly. His excitement warms my heart! We finally find the door and he’s beside himself. He approaches the door gingerly and softly knocks. “Hello?” he calls. I tell him they’re having dinner, not to spoil this magical moment. I take his picture – He stands there proud as peacock and when he’s finished looking around, we make our way back to the car. The sun is going down quickly and he’s almost skipping through the mud. We see a group of 5 or 6 people and he proudly announces to them all “We found a fairy door! It’s number 36 and it’s just down there on the left!” I grin at him and the people. They warmly thank him for the information and tell him they’ll look out for it. He puffs his chest out and says “I shared my information, Mummy!”. We make our way back to the car and we finally get home.

This may not mean much to some people. But this was the moment I realised that if I blink, I’m going to miss it all! It’s this moment that it hits me, smack bang in my face! Every moment is precious. Create moments to remember forever… Make the most of this time with your little ones. I feel like I have missed too much already, I won’t be anymore!